The present invention relates to polymeric resinous products produced by reacting phenolic compounds with dienes. In another aspect, the invention relates to adhesive compositions tackified with the resinous products.
Low molecular weight reaction products of phenols and dienes are known. U.S. Pat. No. 3,336,398, for example, discloses such a resin that has a molecular weight of 300 - 400, indicating that it is no more than a ternary adduct, and U.S. Pat. No. 2,471,454 teaches dihydroterpene-substituted phenol monomers rather than polymer products. Such monomeric products are not useful as tackifiers due to their low molecular weight.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,864,868 discloses the reaction of conjugated dienes with phenols to produce hard, dark resinous products having blocks of polymerized diene rather than alternately repeating diene and phenol units.